Mindful Design: How and Why to Make Design Decisions for the Good of Those Using Your Product

© Scott Riley 2019

Scott RileyMindful Designhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4234-6_4

4. Expectation, Surprise, and the Musical Interface

Scott Riley¹ 

(1)

Nottingham, UK

 

Music is organized sound.

—Edgard Varèse

While the link between design and music might seem tenuous, forced, or even nonexistent, music has proven to be one of the oldest and most informative media we can study—providing us with insights into areas of cognitive psychology and neuroscience as varied as cultural convention, anticipation, surprise, intuition, and emotion. When we break music down into its constituent components, such as melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre, we’re able to explore one of the main tenets of art as a function of the mind: its core lies in the organization ...